Viva la Feminista

As the days get shorter and the air gets crisper a lot of us start to move into homebody mode. Part of this for me usually means getting crafty. And that is why I was excited to get a copy of Feminist Icon Cross-Stitch: 30 Daring Designs to Celebrate Strong Women by Anna Fleiss & Lauren Mancuso. The patterns are pretty easy, so if you have never done cross-stitch before, most of these are totally doable. And you can choose from bad ass ladies such as Frida, as seen on the cover, and Sojourner Truth, Billie Jean King, and Simone de Beauvoir. Each pattern comes with a quick bio of each icon too! So you're learning something while taking some self-care time to craft. If you are new to cross stitch you might wonder, what do I do with them when I'm done? OMG! You can keep it simple and put them in a frame. Or you can get frames that are ornaments to hang on your Christmas or Yule tree. You can get hand towels with cross stitch fabric included so you can hang Cleopatra fr...

As anyone paying a teeny bit of attention to this year's Presidential campaign knows we are now one week away from election day. Much has been written about taco trucks , emails, sexual assault, and adorable old (mostly white) ladies who were born before or around the time women's suffrage was written into the US Constitution. No matter what the outcome is, November 8, 2016 will be a historic day as it took 96 years from suffrage to having a woman as a candidate of a major political party. Many women have run before , but Hillary Clinton is the first to be steps away from being the first woman to be elected to the highest office in the USA. This means for many women we are reflecting back. Reflecting on our grandmas and mothers who were our first women's studies teacher, who role modeled strong womanhood, and who could critique Hillary while still sporting a "I'm with her" button. It also means reflecting on the countless women who fought for suffrage in...

Kerry Washington (Credit: Frank Masi/courtesy of HBO) Twenty-five years ago the country, if not the world, were flung into a crash course on sexual harassment. A staffer’s call to a legal professor in Oklahoma ignited a fire that has yet to be extinguished. That professor was of course Anita F. Hill and that call asked her if she knew anything about her former boss Clarence Thomas that should be known before his confirmation hearing to join the U.S. Supreme Court. What came next is still hotly debated and is now a dramatized movie on HBO starring Kerry Washington as Hill, Wendell Pierce as Thomas and Greg Kinnear as then-Senator Joe Biden sporting an excellent accent. Confirmation dives right into the intrigue and suspense of how does the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee handle the discovery that a number of young women claim to have been harassed by Thomas. Considering that we know the outcome of the hearings as Justice Thomas just asked his first question in a decade from ...

Most people think that the US feminist or women's rights movement began at Seneca Falls , with perhaps a hat tip to Abigail Adams and her "Remember the Ladies" letter to future president John Adams. What most people do not know is that the US feminist movement was influenced by the power sharing that was found in the Iroquois Nation . While I have known of this connection for some time, what I did not know is that once Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth & others ignited the move towards suffrage and equal rights, the US government swiftly took away Iroquois women's right to vote in their Congress. As we gather for Thanksgiving today and try to reconcile our tradition of thanks with the legacy of imperialism, I thought we should take a moment to note our feminist roots and some world class backlash against our indigenous sisters. Sadly this was not remedied until the 1960s. Another failure to see when one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed. Watch his...

Loreta Velazquez was no normal little girl. Even as the young daughter of Cuban aristocrats, she railed against the injustice of being a girl in a world that privileged boys. Her story is told in " Rebel," a new episode of "Voces" on PBS , premiering Friday, May 24th. Velazquez was sent to New Orleans as a child to live with an aunt, who was supposed to "finish" turning Velazquez into a proper young lady. Alas, love had a different plan. How this headstrong Cuban woman went from eloping with a Texan Army officer to becoming a Confederate soldier, then a spy for the Union is filled with tragedy and yearning. Velazquez fulfills her dream of following in the steps of her idol, Joan of Arc, but quickly realizes how unglamorous war actually is. What is known of Velazquez we know from her 1876 memoir A Woman in Battle . She published it a few years after the Civil War ends and it is scandalous! So scandalous that the book is quickly labeled a hoax. Som...

Do you remember the freedom you felt once you were old enough to get a two-wheeled bike and allowed to zoom around your neighborhood? Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat tires Along the Way) by Sue Macy recalls when women first got their own set of wheels and set off unescorted into the world. And that whole unescorted thing really ticked off conservatives at the time. As Macy notes in chapter 2, The Devil's Advance Agent , in the late 1800s women and men dated while being chaperoned by adults, sually in the home of the young woman. With the advent of the bicycle and society's approval for women to jump on board with this new fad, the reach of chaperones was cut. Thus begins the spiral to fogged up car windows on a Friday night. One has to remember that this was at the same time most physical activity, especially sporting activities, was seen as bad for women's bodies and especially their reproductive systems. One also must remembe...

I've described A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique & American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz to others as a historical look at the women who read The Feminine Mystique , the impact of the book on their lives and a look at the myth of Betty Friedan. For a women's history nerd like me, this book was awesome. Admittedly, the semester took it's toll on how quickly, or rather how slowly , I read this book as this review was supposed to be included in Girl w/Pen's salon back in February. I also have to admit that I've never read The Feminine Mystique . I know, I know...but Coontz also talked to women who didn't read the book either! The mythology surrounding TFM is so strong that it has touched most of our lives whether we have read it or not. I believe the mythology of TFM is simply put that Betty Friedan, a 1950s housewife, wrote a book about how she discovered that her boredom of caring for the kids and cleaning the house lead her ...

(1) The hilarious, whip smart and BFF of Viva la Feminista, Jennifer Pozner will be at Women and Children First on Sunday at 4:30 pm. Come hear Jennifer talk about her book Reality Bites Back . Considering that $nooki gets paid $32,000 to give a talk, come hear Jennifer for bus fare! (2) She'll also be at NEIU on Monday at 4:15 pm. (3) Thursday, April 7th the Working Women's History Project will will pay homage to the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire with an in-depth panel discussion and an original production. 6-8:30 pm "The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire at 100 and the Fight for Worker Safety and Justice Now" 6:00 - 7:00 Registration and Light Refreshments 7:00 - Program Roosevelt University, 430 S Michigan, Congress Lounge 2nd Floor Tickets held at door advance $25, at door $30, students free with ID The play: "The Ninth Floor Door: Blocked Justice of the Triangle Fire" by Mary Bonnett. Performed by Mary Bonnett, Bri...

My friend, Alida Brill , and her friend, artist Susan Springer Anderson, have collaborated on a project to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire , and which they call simply: 11.03.25.11 The show A League Of Our Own , with both Susan and Alida interviewed by Fran Spencer will air Thursday, March 24th from 6 pm to 6:30 pm EST. It can be heard on 88.7 FM in Nassau and western Suffolk and some parts of Manhattan, but it can be heard worldwide at WRHU.org. Here is the exact link to listen online: http://live.streamwrhu.net/ A "virtual event" will happen on Alida's website on Thursday before the radio show and will remain up throughout the weekend and throughout next week. Susan's piece is a creative reinterpretation of a shirtwaist of the time, using Tyvek, a building material. Her choice of "fabric" has special meaning and is discussed by Susan in the radio interview and will be described fully on the website Thursday....

I've gotten to a point where the number of books I'm "currently" reading has overwhelmed me. This is because I've been trying to read for "fun" in between reading for class. So instead of waiting another year or three to review this great books, I'm just going to tell you to go get a copy now. I think I've read enough of each of these to give my thumbs up. So what am I trying to read? A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique & American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz  [ IndieBound :: Powells ] I love Coontz. She's written some of my fave books and this is certainly going to join them as a favorite. Coontz visits with women and a few men who read "The Feminine Mystique" to see how the book touched their lives. She also revisits the facts Friedan uses in the book as well as the reality that was the 1960s. I'm only a few chapters in and it's fascinating. I'm not only a fan of women's history, bu...

Today marks 90 years of women in the USA having the right to vote! Because I've been running around like a fool this past week, I'm giving ya a graphical post made of things not of my creation. Enjoy! What to Chicago women do when a British suffragist is in town? Postpone Thanksgiving dinner!   Image from The Society Pages . One of the awesome things about living in Chicago is that I know I'm raising hell in a city that has a long history of women raising hell. Click over to see the newspaper account of this postponed dinner. Have you received the email about women & voting? Kinda surprised it hasn't found a new life in recent weeks. Either way, enjoy these images from that email and two that I took myself:

Today's Women's History Tidbit: Amy Sedaris, Lucy Lawless and Jennifer Capriati were born.* This was originally posted on the AWEARNESS blog.  USA Today ran an excellent piece...called, "10 great places to honor our foremothers." It was a nice surprise as I took that short plane trip from Cleveland to Chicago. Despite the fact that I read about the ten places on a plane , I am actually quite the road trip gal. I like having time to stare out the window, read a good book or knit another scarf. I love checking off one more state visited, even if most of the time I spend is in a family restaurant eating pancakes. The Arizona Women's Heritage Trail fits my definition of a dream vacation. I'm lucky to have been in Jane Addams' Hull House many a time. No matter how often I go there for an event, I am still awed at the history of the place. And the one trip I want to make out of all of them is up to Seneca Falls, to where it all start...

Today's Women's History Tidbit: 1989: Japan's Midori Ito captures the Ladies World Figure Skating Championship in Paris. She is the first woman to land a triple axel in international competition.* This originally was posted at the AWEARNESS blog. My third, last and happiest update on the women of the WASPs... They finally got their gold: Can you pass a tissue? Look at that photo...those hands. Delicate as my late grandmother's, yet you know the history behind them. Those hands are representative of "1,100 young women, all civilian volunteers, [who] flew almost every type of military aircraft -- including the B-26 and B-29 bombers -- as part of the WASP program." Some women were too short for the program but somehow slipped through by standing tip-toe. Yet because the women were civilian volunteers working to support the government, the government did little to support the 38 who died in the line of duty: [26-year-o...

I really, really want to blog every single day this month! In honor of March 1, 2010, I will point you to all the Chicago area Women's History Month calendars I can get my grubby hands on. If you know one I missed, just let me know & I'll add it. UIC Women's Hertitage Month Chicago Public Libraries   Oakton Community College   Evanston Public Library Concordia-Chicago Gannon Center for Women and Leadership (Loyola) Northern Illinois University Chicago Women's Day Women in Journalism : Saturday, March 6, 11:45 am, Elizabeth Brackett, correspondent for Chicago Tonight and PBS NewsHour. Sponsored by North Shore Leagues of Women Voters. The Glen Club, 2901 West Lake Avenue, Glenview. Information: 847-866-7844 To find out more about Women's History Month, head on over to the National Women's History Project. 

As many of you know, I named my daughter after Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This wasn't in pure ignorance of Stanton's racist and classist argument for women getting the vote before Black men. It was rather in recognition of her igniting a movement that still lives today and brought us, women & men, so much. This spring she had to pick a topic for a research project. She picked three topics and her teacher chose Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This weekend we were filling out the information sheets that make up her project and reading through the two books she has on Stanton & suffrage when she asked the $64,000 question. "She wanted everyone to be equal right?" I've never had any thought of telling her about Stanton thru rose colored glasses. Far from it. I guess I didn't think she'd bring up the equality question. But I should have known better. Luckily one of the books she has is If You Lived When Women Won Their Rights by Anne Kamma. In it one of the...

This was originally posted on the AWEARNESS blog. Jane Addams was the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize - the Peace Prize in 1931. Since 2007, Illinois has marked her receiving the Nobel Peace Prize with a statewide holiday (although no school is canceled and people still have to go to work). I actually like holidays where kids have to be in school, and it's not just because I want to get my daughter out of the house so I can go to work. Rather, I would hope that on Jane Addams Day (December 10th of each year) , students are taught about the many amazing things she did in Chicago that still impact lives across the world. Addams not only transformed the field of social work , she was also a founder and the first president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom , a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and she campaigned against World War I. ...